2025 Weitzman School Awards: Philadelphia

The Weitzman School Awards celebrate the achievements of visionary students as well as leaders in architecture, planning, and design beyond the Penn community. 

Marina Tabassum Architects (MTA), the Bangladeshi architecture firm whose Serptentine Pavilion 2025: A Capsule in Time was completed earlier this year, is the recipient of the 2025 Kanter Tritsch Medal in Architecture, and the Green Heart Louisville Project, the University of Louisville’s groundbreaking scientific study of the benefits of trees and shrubs on human heart health, was selected to receive the 2025 Witte-Sakamoto Family Medal in City and Regional Planning.

This event features talks by architect Marina Tabassum and two members of the Greenheart Louisville Project: Aruni Bhatnagar, PhD, FAHA, Chief, Division of Environmental Medicine, Smith and Lucille Gibson Professor of Medicine, Director, Christina Lee Brown Envirome Institute/American Heart Association Tobacco Regulation Center, and a Distinguished University Scholar at the University of Louisville; and Ted R. Smith, PhD, Professor of Medicine and Pharmacology at the University of Louisville, and Director for the Center of Healthy Air, Water and Soil.

About the Greenheart Louisville Project 

The Green Heart Louisville Project is a groundbreaking scientific study that is testing the hypothesis that introducing more green trees and shrubs into a neighborhood can directly lower the risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD), the leading cause of death worldwide. Launched in 2018, the study investigates whether and how living among more densely greened surroundings contributes to better heart health.  

About Marina Tabassum Architects

Founded in 2005, Marina Tabassum Architects (MTA) is an internationally recognised architecture and studio-based practice located in Dhaka, Bangladesh. MTA began with the mission of establishing a language of architecture that is relevant to the contemporary world yet rooted in location. MTA’s work is widely praised as environmentally conscious, socially responsible, and historically and culturally appropriate. Every project undertaken is a sensitive and relevant response to the uniqueness of individual sites, contexts, cultures, and people. 

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